Abstract
HOWEVER prophetic may have been the far-seeing premonitions of men in advance of their age in the dim past, and however invaluable may have been the additions made to the superstructure since, it can scarcely be doubted that the foundation-stones of geology were laid by Scotchmen and Englishmen towards the end of the last, and during the earlier part of the present century. And what a charm is there about the story of these sturdy pioneers, not perhaps quite the men whom one would have picked out as most fitted or most likely to become the fathers of a new science. It has about it the elements of a genuine romance. For the early training of few of these men was such as to give a scientific bent to their mind; they did not have what we are pleased to call “the advantage of a scientific education”; it is probable that they never spoke, perhaps never dreamed of, such a phrase as “the scientific method,” which we are so fond of formularizing, and on which we plume ourselves somewhat. But in spite of these seeming drawbacks, rather perhaps because with these men genius was allowed to run its spontaneous untrammelled course, they opened out to mankind a domain of knowledge the very outskirts of which had been barely touched upon before. Of shrewd mother-wit were they; too keen of eye to be wrong about their facts; not a few were ardent sportsmen, and the same instinct which led them to ride straight to hounds or patiently and warily to stalk the deer, led them also, as they brushed away minor details, to go direct to main issues, and carried them on, without rest but without haste, through the toils of many a year's steady field-work. With what awe and reverence do we look up to these giants when we pass their achievements in review!
Aids in Practical Geology.
By Grenville A. J. Cole, Professor of Geology in the Royal College of Science for Ireland. (London: C. Griffin and Co., 1891.)
An Introduction to the Study of Petrology: the Igneous Rocks.
By Frederick H. Hatch (London: Sonnenschein and Co., 1891.)
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GREEN, A. Aids in Practical Geology An Introduction to the Study of Petrology: the Igneous Rocks. Nature 44, 25–27 (1891). https://doi.org/10.1038/044025a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/044025a0
